Journal of Management Studies 45:3 May 2008

0022-2380

Reflecting on Reflexivity: Reflexive Textual Practices

in Organization and Management Theory

Mats Alvesson, Cynthia Hardy and Bill Harley

Lund University; University of Melbourne; University of Melbourne

abstract This paper identifies four sets of textual practices that researchers in the field of
organization and management theory (OMT) have used in their attempts to be reflexive. We
characterize them as multi-perspective, multi-voicing, positioning and destabilizing. We show
how each set of practices can help to produce reflexive research, but also how each embodies
limitations and paradoxes. Finally, we consider the interplay among these sets of practices to
develop ideas for new avenues for reflexive practice by OMT researchers.

INTRODUCTION
Reflexive research has been attracting increasing attention in organization and manage-
ment theory (OMT) in recent years, leading some to argue that theory construction has
turned inward to become largely an exercise in disciplined reflexivity (Weick, 1999,
p. 803). While reflexivity has been a concern for some positivists and neo-empiricists (see
Johnson and Duberley (2003) for discussion of the methodological reflexivity employed
by such researchers), we focus on critical, interpretive work that conceptualizes social
reality as being constructed, rather than discovered, during research. Such work has
defined reflexivity as research that turns back upon and takes account of itself (Clegg and
Hardy, 1996a; Holland, 1999), to explore the situated nature of knowledge; the institu-
tional, social and political processes whereby research is conducted and knowledge is
produced; the dubious position of the researcher; and the constructive effects of language
(Cals and Smircich, 1999).
Researchers in organization and management theory (OMT) have engaged in a range
of practices in both conducting and writing up research, in their efforts to be reflexive. In
the case of the former, reflexive practices are those embodied practices in which the
researcher engages in relation to research subjects, practitioners and students (e.g. Boje
and Rosile, 1994; Cunliffe, 2002a, 2002b, 2004). Researchers have therefore studied the
ways in which they can act reflexively to foreground other participants voices, especially
when they conduct their empirical work. The emphasis is on embodiment and lived
Address for reprints: Mats Alvesson, Dept of Business Administration, Lund University, PO Box 7080, 220 07
Lund, Sweden (Mats.Alvesson@fek.lu.se).

Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
 Reflecting on Reflexivity 481
experience in addition to language use, in relation to others who are not necessarily
other researchers (e.g. Barge, 2004; Cunliffe, 2002b). In the case of the latter (the ways
in which researchers write up their research), language use is situated more narrowly
(in relation to the academic community) and the other is predominantly other
researchers. This approach to reflexivity is conceptualized as an epistemological prac-
tice that emphasizes intellectual critique (Barge, 2004, p. 70) as predominantly textual
practices are used to invoke and present various forms of reflexive analysis. As a result
and other forms of intellectual engagement notwithstanding the emphasis is on
textual practices used by researchers to present their work reflexively (e.g. Clegg and
Hardy, 1996a).
It has been argued that it is the textual practices underpinning intellectual critique
which have attracted the most attention (Barge, 2004; Cunliffe, 2003). As a result, a
reappraisal of these practices is warranted to assess how reflexivity can contribute to
research, and also to consider the ways in which it can be problematic (Lynch, 2000;
Weick, 1999). In this way, we hope to contribute to the current debate about reflexivity
in OMT in a number of ways. First, we show a range of ways in which reflexivity has
been practiced in the way the OMT literature has been written. Second, we identify how
these practices can slide into being unreflexive. Third, by drawing on four sets of textual
practices that are commonly used in the literature, we show how, by combining and
differentiating them, we can encourage new reflexive directions.
The paper is structured as follows. First, we provide a brief overview of four particular
sets of textual reflexive practices used in OMT that we have identified from the literature
and show their contributions. Second, we then explore some of the ways in which each
may fail to meet its own reflexive aspirations. Third, we use our framework to show how
a different reflexive approach might be achieved by combining and differentiating these
practices. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of some of the implications of our
approach to, and recognition of, multiple reflexive practices.

FORMS OF REFLEXIVE PRACTICE

Reflexive practices aim, to varying degrees, to cast doubt on the idea that competent
observers can with objectivity, clarity, and precision report on their own observations of
the social world (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994, p. 11). This literature owes a large intel-
lectual debt to early concerns about the limits of objectivity and the provisional nature of
knowledge. For example, Popper (1959) recognized that theory and data could not be
neatly separated. Kuhn (1970), by highlighting the historically-situated nature of knowl-
edge, played a pivotal role in the gradual shift towards a greater acceptance of indeter-
minism in the social sciences, setting the scene for constructivist and postmodernist
approaches (Delanty and Strydom, 2003a). Post-empiricist scholars, notably Lakatos
(1978) and Feyerabend (1978), challenged understandings of knowledge as being pro-
duced through purely rational and formal processes of theory testing, highlighting the
role of political and other factors (Delanty and Strydom, 2003b). Writers such as these
thus laid much of the groundwork for contemporary work in OMT that argues that
interpretation-free, theory-neutral facts do not exist but are, rather, constructions

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(Alvesson and Skldberg, 2000; Merilinen et al., 2004), and which acknowledges that
linguistic, social, political and theoretical elements are woven together in ways that shape
the knowledge-development process (Cals and Smircich, 1999).
In relation to these processes, we are concerned with the practices of writing about
research, rather than with the embodied practices involved in conducting empirical
research, although this does not prevent us from recognizing their importance to reflex-
ivity (e.g. Alvesson, 2003; Boje, 1998; Cunliffe, 2002b). We therefore examined textual
practices used by researchers in their attempts to be reflexive. In focusing on reflexivity
as textual practice, we argue that what members of a research community in this case,
OMT[1] know to be reflexivity is shaped by and enacted in the textual practices of
researchers. Accordingly, we selected texts in OMT that have explicitly addressed issues
related to reflexivity, as well as texts that are frequently referred to in contemporary
writings as being reflexive, based on our general familiarity with the literature as well as
recommendations from colleagues, reviewers and the editor; although we acknowledge
that our selection is illustrative rather than exhaustive.
From our analysis, we identified four relatively distinct sets of practices that commonly
appear in the literature. Our four categories should not be seen as rigid boundaries: we
acknowledge that some work expresses an interest in more than one practice (e.g. Boje
et al., 1999; Cunliffe, 2002b). Nonetheless, our reading of the literature points to a range
of textual practices to reflexivities rather than reflexivity that have been regularly used
in work in OMT, where researchers have stated their intention to be reflexive. We
believe that a comparison of these different textual practices offers a useful starting point
for a discussion of reflexivity, although we fully expect that not all readers will agree with
our particular categorization, a theme to which we will return in our discussion of self
reflexivity.

Reflexivity as Multi-Perspective Practices

One set of practices associated with reflexivity in OMT is the use of multiple perspectives
(Holland, 1999; Lewis and Kelemen, 2002). Its original impetus came from the paradigm
wars over the incommensurability thesis, where some theorists argued that a multi-
paradigmatic view of a particular phenomenon or study could be used to provide a more
comprehensive understanding (Gioia and Pitre, 1990). Similarly, Morgan (1983, p. 16)
acknowledged the fallacy of trying to evaluate the different perspectives from a single
perspective within the system and argued in favour of a dialectic between a number of
such points of view. Morgans subsequent work (1986) on metaphors complemented the
use of multiple paradigms as a way of reflecting on knowledge production; an approach
to reflexivity that has since expanded to include multiple vocabularies, theories, stories,
interpretations, paradoxes and frames (Alvesson, 1996; Boje, 1995; Hassard, 1991; Poole
and Van de Ven, 1989; Schultz and Hatch, 1996; Van de Ven and Poole, 2005;
Willmott, 1993). While acknowledging the influence of the paradigm wars, we distin-
guish between the reflexive researcher and the paradigm warrior. Instead of treating
epistemological positions as manifestations of metaphysical principles, as paradigm war-
riors ( Jackson and Carter, 1993) do, this reflexive use of the paradigms involves seeking
out anomalies among them:

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 Reflecting on Reflexivity 483
in a way that is mindful of the historically and politically situated quality of our
reasoning. By becoming more practically reflexive about the conditions of theorizing,
we move away from an external and seemingly authoritative form of analysis and
towards an immanent, self-consciously situated form of critique. (Willmott, 1993,
p. 708)

Accordingly, researchers use tensions among different perspectives to expose different

assumptions and open up new ways of thinking, much like Keenoys (1999) hologram,
where, by getting up and moving to another theoretical place, we can see things differently.

[H]olographic illusions of depth, contour, shade and shape and, sometimes, movement
are entirely dependent on the relationship between the observer and the observed: they
only come into being in the process of interaction. (Keenoy, 1999, p. 10)

Drawing on Rortys (1989) warning about the danger of believing in the superiority of
a final vocabulary, the reflexive researcher uses a set of practices involving the juxtapo-
sition of perspectives to draw attention to the limitations in using a single frame of
reference and, in so doing, provide new insights. It is the accumulation of these perspectives
that amounts to reflexivity: the use of different perspectives is enlightening in that it helps
to complement otherwise incomplete research. For example, Knights and McCabe
(2002, p. 235; emphasis added) use rational managerialist, critical control, and processual
interpretations to build on earlier approaches [to TQM] in the anticipation we might
move beyond our present understanding. These practices help the researcher to break
the habits of routine thought and see the world as though for the first time (Cooper and
Burrell, 1988, p. 101). They construct reflexivity as instructive and enlightening by
helping researchers to answer the question: what are the different ways in which a
phenomenon can be understood and how do they produce different knowledge(s)?

Reflexivity as Multi-Voicing Practices

A second set of practices focuses on the authorial identity of the field worker and their
relation to the Other, i.e. the research subject, drawing from the work of sociology and
anthropology, where the role of the researcher has increasingly been called into question
(Van Maanen, 1988); and as more attention has focused on the role of the research subject
in the construction of research texts (Clifford and Marcus, 1986). Linking research texts to
Bakhtins (1981) notion of a heteroglossia a dynamic multiplicity of voices, genres and
social languages (Maybin, 2001, p. 67) it has been suggested that researcher and
research subjects collectively negotiate the meaning of language, undermining the privileged
position of researchers over research subjects and weakening the claims of the former to
report reliably on the experiences of the latter (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994).
A number of specific textual practices have been used to question how OMT research-
ers can speak authentically of the experience of the Other, and in interrogating the
relationship between the two. First, the researcher is recognized as part of the research
project, a subject just like any other that is constructed in and through the research
project: we do not simply bring the self to the field so much as create the self in the field

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(Reinharz, 1997, p. 3). Second, it is incumbent on the researcher to declare the authorial
personality to present the details of their particular experiences and interests (Boje and
Rosile, 1994) and to divulge the steps they have taken in order to present their work as
meaningful (Golden-Biddle and Locke, 1993; Jeffcutt, 1994).

[I]nvestigators seek ways of demonstrating to their audiences their historical and

geographic situatedness, their personal investments in the research, various biases they
bring to the work, their surprises and undoings in the process of the research
endeavor, the ways in which their choices of literature tropes lend rhetorical force to
the research report and/or the ways in which they have avoided or suppressed certain
points of view. (Gergen and Gergen, 2000, p. 1027)

Third, various literary techniques have been employed to open up space for the Other
in research accounts through the self-conscious use of writing techniques, e.g. reflexive
ethnographies, literary autoethnographies, narratives of the self (Hayano, 1979) and
applied in OMT through the use of fiction, drama, and narrative (Czarniawska, 1997;
Hatch, 1996). By being more creative and experimental in writing, researchers can
bridge the gulf between self and other by revealing both parties as vulnerable, experi-
encing subjects working to coproduce knowledge (Tedlock, 2000, p. 467).

Reflexivity as Positioning Practices

A third set of practices goes beyond a focus on authorial identity and emphasizes the fact
that knowledge is not something that people possess in their heads, but rather, it is
something that people do together (Gergen, 1991, p. 270). What distinguishes this
approach from the previous construction of reflexivity is that it is not simply concerned
with the relationship between researcher and research subject, but also with the way that
the authors research takes place within a broader network or field. These broader social
processes shape knowledge, meaning that the researcher can construct knowledge only
in the context of a particular research community and society (Callon, 1986).
Work in the sociology of scientific knowledge and science and technology studies has
been particularly important in developing this concept of reflexivity. Early researchers
(Barnes, 1974) argued that scientific knowledge could be understood in the same way as
any other area of culture. Subsequent researchers incorporated social constructionism
(Woolgar, 1988) and drew attention to the degree to which politics is found in scientific
workplaces (Latour, 1987; Latour and Woolgar, 1979). As a result, the burgeoning
literature featured empirical studies of how scientific claims were secured, helping to
identify the political and rhetorical processes by which knowledge claims were accepted
as true or false in the particular institutional setting (Shapin, 1995). From a somewhat
different perspective, Bourdieu also emphasized research as a collective enterprise (Bour-
dieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 40), arguing that the subject of reflexivity must ultimately
be the social scientific field in toto that takes into consideration the social organization of
social science, as an institution inscribed in both objective and mental mechanisms
(p. 41).

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 Reflecting on Reflexivity 485
Researchers interested in how the larger network of practices and interests produces
particular interpretations of knowledge have drawn on these ideas to explore research on
organizations (Hardy et al., 2001; Oakes et al., 1998). Reflexive practices thus explore
the broader social landscape within which research and researchers are positioned: the
networks of beliefs, practices, and interests that favor one interpretation over another;
and, ideally, the way that one interpretation rather than another comes to predominate
(Collins, 1998, p. 297). They are used to examine the fates of competing claims made by
actors, how technical and discursive resources are used to legitimate claims in keeping
with broader institutionalized norms, and how context, power, and historical circum-
stances combine to produce knowledge.

Reflexivity as Destabilizing Practices

A fourth set of practices has been influenced by the writings of Derrida and Foucault.
This literature is somewhat different from the work described above in that researchers
do not reflect on their own theorizing so much as they target the unreflexive research of
others. We include an examination of these practices because they make reflexive claims
through the way in which they interrogate claims to knowledge; and they have been
considered under the rubric of reflexivity by others (e.g. Cals and Smircich, 1999; Clegg
and Hardy, 1996a). According to this view, the production of knowledge, particularly
positivist versions that try to establish the truth, lead to a certain version of the social
world, with associated power effects. All knowledge projects are thus dangerous, insofar
as any version of truth carries with it a particular freezing of the social world and a
configuration of political privileges and should, therefore, be closely interrogated and
cross-examined. The means to do so lie with postmodern theoretical and epistemological
assumptions that undermine the idea that research is ultimately a progressive (or even
meandering and circuitous) path towards universal truths.
Knights (1992), for example, used a Foucauldian methodology to critique the work of
Michael Porter on strategy and to show that strategic discourse and practice represent a
set of power-knowledge relations that constitutes the subjectivity of managers and
employees. Archaeological investigations help to uncover the philosophical, political,
social, and economic rules of formation that underlie the development of specific man-
agement theories; while genealogical analyses can be used to examine the conditions of
possibility for such knowledge to be drawn upon in the exercise of power (Knights, 1992,
p. 530). In this way, the pretensions of Porters claim to universal truth are exposed.
Foucauldian insights have also been employed to interrogate Total Quality Management
(Knights and McCabe, 2002), Human Resource Management (Townley, 1993) and
accounting (Hopwood, 1987).
Other practices draw on the concept of deconstruction associated with Derrida. They
have been used to challenge claims in accounting that external metaphysical grounding
exists outside the text and to suggest that, rather, such grounding is provided by the
linguistic and rhetorical strategies of the author (Arrington and Francis, 1989, p. 3).
Linstead (1993) has proposed deconstructive ethnographies of organizations to call into
question the authority of any particular account. Cals and Smircich (1991) have decon-
structed classic organizational texts using Foucault, Derrida and feminist poststructural

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theory to show how the success of leadership can be explained by its seductive nature,
which is hidden behind knowledge claims.
In questioning the conditions and consequences of the construction of a theory,
these practices are intended to destabilize the epistemological assumptions of other
forms of theorizing. Research is interrogated through critical attention to presuppo-
sitions about both its status as science and its claim to produce empirical evidence
about the way the world is independently of its own values about the the way the
world should be (Arrington and Francis, 1989, p. 2). Destabilizing practices hold
theories intellectually accountable by problematizing the conditions and consequences
of their formation: the rationality, truth, and progress claimed by particular theories
are exposed as myths.

LIMITATIONS OF REFLEXIVE PRACTICES

In this section, having provided an overview of the four sets of practices (Table I), we
point out some of the paradoxes and limitations associated with them.

Multi-Perspective Practices
This reflexive researcher is a traveller, periodically moving from place to place so that he
or she may see things differently. Thus, writers tend to speak in terms of a journey
through the paradigms (Hassard, 1991), bridging paradigms (Gioia and Pitre, 1990), and
crossing paradigms (Schultz and Hatch, 1996). He or she is also a builder or bricoleur,
piecing together a richer, more varied picture by viewing research their own or others
from different angles. These practices guard against theorizing that presents an unam-
biguous view of reality represented in the form of a single grand narrative, not by
dismissing the foundational claim of any single perspective that it offers a better under-
standing of reality (as destabilizing practices tend to do), but by showing how other
perspectives provide different understandings and, by combining them, greater insight
might be achieved.
This approach nonetheless raises a number of questions. First, researchers recognize
that no single paradigm, metaphor, or theory can account for the language games in
which it is embedded (Cals and Smircich, 1999). How is it, then, that rotating among
a selection of them can do so, when each is individually flawed? Second, how does one
combine the different perspectives? Schultz and Hatch (1996) note three different ways
in which researchers link the paradigms: incommensurability, where researchers focus
on the differences; integration, where researchers ignore the differences; and crossing,
where researchers engage with the differences in one of four different ways (sequentially,
in a parallel manner, through second order concepts and by interplay). The result is a
complex set of choices for the reflexive researcher. Third, how can researchers apply all
paradigms equally when they inevitably have a preferred position (Parker and McHugh,
1991)? Some have argued that it would require a quasi-religious conversion (Lewis and
Kelemen, 2002, p. 265) to do so. Multi-perspective reflexive practices thus evoke pan-
theism in worshipping multiple paradigms, metaphors or theories, researchers assume
that the problems associated with any individual theory are overcome. The paradox is

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 Table I. Sets of reflexive practices
Sources of inspiration
OMT examples
Means used
Key questions asked
Focus on
Orientation of reflexive
research
Epistemological and
ontological assumptions
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Multi-perspective practices
Rorty, 1989; Burrell and
Morgan, 1979
Hassard, 1991; Alvesson,
1996; Schultz and Hatch,
1996
Multiple paradigms,
metaphors, theories
What are the different
ways in which a
phenomenon can be
understood? How do they
produce different
knowledge(s)?
Frame
Enlightening: reflexivity
complements incomplete redresses imbalance
research
Single ontologically-fixed
phenomenon can be
known in different ways
from different
epistemological
perspectives
Multi-voicing practices Positioning practices Destabilizing practices
Hayano, 1979; Clifford Latour and Woolgar, Foucault, 1980; Derrida,
and Marcus, 1986 1979; Bourdieu and 1982
Wacquant, 1992
Jeffcutt, 1994; Boje and Oakes et al., 1998; Hardy Cals and Smircich,
Rosile, 1994 et al., 2001 1991; Knights, 1992
Auto-ethnography, Actor network theory, Opposing epistemological
experimental writing epistemic reflexivity assumptions,
deconstruction
Can we speak What is the network of What are the conditions
authentically of the practices and interests and consequences of the
experience of the Other? that produces particular construction of a theory
If so, how? What is the interpretations of or a fact?
relationship between Self knowledge?
and Other?
Authorship Actors/positions within a Theory/epistemology
Reflecting on Reflexivity
network/field
Enfranchizing: reflexivity Exposing: reflexivity Cross examining:
reveals role of reflexivity challenges
between researcher and institutional forces dangerous research
subject
No ontological or A variety of ontological False ontological status is
epistemological position and epistemological exposed by a different
outside the text positions are adopted as epistemology (of an
the researcher navigates outside observer)
the field
487
488 M. Alvesson et al.
that, having abandoned the idea that a particular paradigm or metaphor is correct or
superior, this form of reflexivity is limited in terms of providing grounds for selecting
from among the countless other paradigms, metaphors or theories that are available for
worship. The main grounds for choosing are found with reference to the academic
community, not the paradigms themselves, and rely on academic norms or fashions
which are inevitably politicized, socialized, and institutionalized as, for example, an
interest in paradigms has been replaced by a concern with multiple frames, then meta-
phors, and so on.

Multi-Voicing Practices
Multi-voicing practices force the researcher to ask questions about the relationship
between the author and the Other and to consider whether, and how, the researcher can
speak authentically of the research subject. Reflexive researchers open up texts to
multiple readings; to decentre authors as authority figures; and to involve participants,
readers and audiences in the production of research (Putnam, 1996, p. 386). In so doing,
the intention is to undermine the authority of the research account, which is merely one
representation among many, and the privileged power position of the researcher by
giving the reader and/or research subject a more active role in interpreting meaning
(Marcus, 1994). By engaging in these practices, the reflexive researcher acknowledges his
or her identity as a participant in the research and confesses any sins in terms of
personal interests or rhetorical manoeuvres. The reflexive researcher is just another
subject, albeit one with the artistic and literary skill necessary to carry out these practices
successfully (Vidich and Lyman, 2000).
Paradoxically, practices to downplay the researcher and give greater space to the
subject often end up drawing considerable attention towards the researcher (Clegg and
Hardy, 1996a). New forms of writing have often placed the researchers personal expe-
rience centre-stage (Van Maanen, 1988). In this way, these practices have been criticized
for turning the self (of the researcher) into a fieldsite (Robertson, 2002) at the expense of
the empirical work in question (Fournier and Grey, 2000) because researchers tend to be
more interested in our practices than in those of anybody else (Weick, 2002, p. 898). It
is this narcissism that shows the limitations of this approach: the impossibility of giving
everyone associated with the research researcher, research subject and reader a voice,
let alone an equal voice, even with the best intentions.

Positioning Practices
Positioning practices draw attention to the various political, cultural, and institutional
constraints embedded in the academic community. They locate the reflexive researcher
in this landscape: subjected to and resistant against the controls embedded in profes-
sional networks of individuals and institutions (Clegg and Hardy, 1996a). He or she
recognizes the way in which research and researcher are influenced by the shared
orientations of a particular research community, whose conventions not only conceal
but actively misrepresent the complex and diverse processes involved in the production
and legitimation of scientific findings (Mulkay, 1992, p. 69), as well as the political

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interests from which these conventions arise. The reflexive researcher is thus a networker
and politician (Collins, 1998; Deetz, 1996), able to identify conventions, fashions, and
conformist pressures embedded in publication outlets, journal formats, conferences, and
funding arrangements, as well as an adventurer-explorer who navigates them through
the judicious use of power (Putnam, 1996), artful deployment of rhetoric (Shapin, 1995)
and knowledge of the rules of the game (Mauws and Phillips, 1995).
Ironically, in showing how reflexive researchers can navigate supposedly inescapable
social forces, these practices help to construct the heroic if somewhat cynical and jaded
researcher that they are trying to repudiate. For example, Hardy et al. (2001), in trying
to be reflexive about their own research, acknowledge that there is no way that an
individual can produce science; only a community can produce science. However, they
go on to show how they were nonetheless able successfully to represent the many silent
actors of the social world that they mobilized through their research study and, in
particular, become indispensable authors by ensuring their form of analysis became an
obligatory passage point and hence publishable. Thus, the reflexive researcher is
supposedly able to see constraints in a way that others do not and, while he or she may
not be able to dismantle them, he or she can nonetheless work around them. Accord-
ingly, the paradox associated with this construction of reflexivity relates to the highly
individualized portrayal of the researcher as a superior navigator or negotiator of social
forces that should not be navigable or negotiable at all. Consequently, these reflexive
practices are problematic because the emphasis on the limitations of agency, which sets
it apart from other practices that tend to focus on the individual researcher, is subse-
quently undermined by highly individualistic explanations of knowledge production.

Destabilizing Practices
Destabilizing practices are powerful in their ability to call theorizing to account for itself
and to point out a lack of reflexivity, usually on the part of others. The reflexive
researcher is disruptive, willing to unsettle the academic community, and to make
trouble, especially for research that is readily accepted in the wider academic commu-
nity. As an insurgent, the reflexive researcher challenges research by taking up a place
outside the target project, which is usually undertaken by other researchers, and then
infiltrates it in order to undermine its very foundations its claims to knowledge and
progress by asking fundamental questions about the conditions and consequences of
its construction. In this way, the reflexive researcher makes regular incursions over
a metaphorical border between different epistemologies, bringing the preferred one
(usually Foucauldian or Derridean) to bear on and undermine the other (usually a
mainstay of more orthodox work).
These reflexive practices nonetheless embody a paradox in that they are used to
produce an authoritative text, while relying on a set of assumptions that stresses that
there can be no such thing. Researchers assert that, by engaging in these reflexive
practices, they can create sufficient distance to reflect on the assumptions, reasoning, and
knowledge inherent in someone elses research project, and to see something that others
do not. For example, Knights (1992, p. 516) points to how he has been able to identify
the philosophical, political, social, and economic rules of formation that underlie the

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development of specific management practices and discourses, which would ordinarily
elude the conscious awareness of the researcher. In this way, the practices ironically
evoke a degree of omnipotence in that the reflexive researcher claims to possess insights
that others do not. Since these practices tend to be used to undermine the work of others,
rather than applied to the reflexive researchers own research, researchers are able, to a
certain extent, to avoid making the truth claims that they would dismiss in the case of
others. But, in offering warnings rather than guidelines, these practices are limited in
their ability to generate new knowledge.

REFLECTING ON REFLEXIVE PRACTICES

By drawing attention to some of the limitations associated with reflexive practices
(Table II), we do not intend to imply they are not worthwhile; merely that each is limited
in what it can achieve and it is helpful to reflect upon them. Furthermore, by reflecting
on the framework that we have constructed, we can identify additional ways of being
reflexive.

Combinations
One conclusion that follows from the identification of four separate sets of practices is
that, by combining them, we might generate additional questions for researchers to
consider.
For researchers employing multi-perspective practices, the addition of multi-voicing prac-
tices might help them explore how their use of multiple perspectives constructs the
author in different ways. For example, does the author emerge out of one particular
perspective and then apply other perspectives? Does a home position provide a richer,
more informed reading, while other perspectives are used in a more selective, pragmatic
way? Or does the author (or different authors) emerge from where the perspectives
overlap or, even perhaps, from gaps where the perspectives do not connect? (Is there, in
fact, such a space and, if so, how might we conceptualize it?) How do the relationships
between research subject and researcher-as-subject change according to the different
perspectives that are used? Are some voices always left out, regardless of the choices
made regarding perspectives; or does the discovery of new voices produce new per-
spectives that embody different relationships among self and (the search for) Others?
Positioning practices help to interrogate how the choice of perspectives is influenced
by time and context. Arguably, there are structured sets of positions or templates for the
use of multi-perspective practices that are institutionally supported and rewarded. For
some time, multi-perspective studies have typically used Burrell and Morgans (1979)
original paradigms. What is the political agenda associated with particular choices? How
do new choices emerge and become legitimated? How are particular paradigms pro-
duced out of the relationships among researcher, research community, and the available
resources, i.e. accepted conventions related to theoretical developments in the field?
Finally, the application of destabilizing practices might lead to a different dynamic:
instead of the sequential or parallel use of perspectives to build on each other, researchers
might use them to undermine each other and to interrogate the relationships among

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 Table II. The limitations of reflexive practices
Identity and position of
the reflexive researcher
Paradox
Limitations
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Multi-perspective practices
Traveller, builder,
bricoleur: viewing own
research or the research
of others from different
positions
Pantheism: ends up
advocating the use of a
range of perspectives
when the grounds for
choosing any one are
problematic
Strategies for selecting
particular perspectives are
unclear, and the
particular way in which
the perspectives are
juxtaposed remains
contested
Multi-voicing practices Positioning practices
Participant, confessor, Networker, politician,
artist becoming part of adventurer-explorer:
the research project, on a navigating the broad
par with other research social landscape in which
subjects research and researcher
are embedded
Narcissism: ends up Heroism: ends up
drawing all attention to implying an astute
the researcher when researcher can negotiate
trying to downplay the system constraints while stresses there is no such
researcher repudiating agency
It is impossible to give Solutions for navigating
everyone a voice (let the collective research
alone an equal voice) process are highly
individualistic
Destabilizing practices
Trouble maker,
infiltrator, insurgent:
making incursions from
outside the project of
another researcher
Omnipotence: ends up
claiming authority using
an epistemology which
thing
Reflecting on Reflexivity
Tends to be used to
undermine research done
by others, difficult to use
to develop or build theory
491
492 M. Alvesson et al.
them more fundamentally. Rather than positing perspectives as complementary and,
therefore by changing interpretation, adding more positive knowledge to produce a more
holistic picture, different perspectives might be used to challenge each other and to
illuminate potential problems with one particular perspective, as in Alvessons (1996)
juxtaposition of Foucault and Habermas.
When multi-voicing practices are combined with multi-perspective practices, each
research subject could be seen from multiple perspectives a specific subject is not just,
for example, a female, but may be viewed as gendered (and non-gendered) and located
in varied ways (e.g. victim, emancipated, dominant) made possible through the use of
specific theoretical perspectives. Reflexive researchers could examine the relationships
among these multiple subjects brought into focus by alternative readings encouraged by
the use of different perspectives.
Positioning practices might raise questions about the relationships between the use of
multi-voicing practices and the particular research community, in terms of how the latter
constructs voices that are deemed legitimate subjects for discovery. For example, why
are these practices so much less common in OMT than in anthropology? Why are some
subjects less likely to be given a voice? Why is giving managers a voice in a sensitive way
a relatively rare practice in critical management studies? How does this relate to the
way in which critical management studies has been constructed from particular voices,
such as Marx, Gramsci and Habermas? What imprint has been left by these ancestral
voices and how does it shape the political agenda of reflexive research?
The use of destabilizing practices might help reflexive researchers deconstruct the
multiplicity of voices that appear in researchers accounts. If the aim of multi-voicing
practices is to give voice to the marginalized, is it not possible to use destabilizing
practices to subvert that worthy cause, regardless of how politically incorrect it may
appear? And what is the relation of liberated voices to understandings of political
correctness? How does the postmodern and critical project shape the choices of the
reflexive researcher in silencing or amplifying particular voices? In other words, in what
other ways can the relationship between the author, the research subject, and the
reflexive researcher be destabilized?
Positioning practices may be complemented through the employment of multi-
perspective practices that show how the reflexive researcher selects a particular repre-
sentation of the social terrain and the social forces acting upon the research process.
Different theories may be helpful in moving beyond the research community or a
particular version of it to consider how broader societal and cultural trends influence
research. For example, Laschs (1978) conception of a narcissistic culture or Baudrillards
(1983) conceptions of a postmodern society may provide theoretical resources for alter-
native constructions of the social logics that influence accounts of positioning, as well as
providing a different portfolio of perspectives than is usually used.
Multi-voicing practices can be used to trigger questions around who puts imprints on
the final text and how the researcher constructs him/herself and the role of others in it.
One could imagine a research text as an outcome of a multitude of different voices, all
trying to give as much input as possible to the process and the outcome. The researcher,
gatekeepers and guardians in the form of authors of key references and, more directly,
the editor, reviewers and anticipated readers can be seen as ghostwriters of the text,

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 Reflecting on Reflexivity 493
providing limited space for author originality. Informants and other representatives of
the business community also play a role in shaping the work. Making sense of and
reflecting upon how these voices are being emphasized, marginalized, repressed, chan-
nelled, and translated would be a useful exercise in reflexivity
Positioning practices can also be interrogated by the use of destabilizing practices that
draw attention to the relationship between the researcher and the research community.
In the same way that the practices of particular authors have been deconstructed for how
they make knowledge claims, the practices of reflexive authors might be destabilized to
show how they make reflexivity claims. The subtleties and rhetorical moves in accounts of
how the researcher locates him/herself in a particular academic or societal context could
be explored.
Destabilizing practices can be combined with multi-perspective practices. For example,
Cals and Smircich (1992) demonstrate that examining organization studies from dif-
ferent positions generates different understandings of the field (multi-perspective prac-
tice), and simultaneously challenges the gendered epistemological basis of the discipline
(destabilizing practice). Similarly, Knights and McCabe (2002) use multi-perspective
practices to interrogate TQM, before moving to a Foucauldian analysis aimed at chal-
lenging the epistemological foundations of the perspectives they have just used.
Those who rely on destabilizing practices tend to construct one particular reading
of other theorists. For example, Porter has been singled out for his work on strategy
(Knights, 1992) and Weick on organizing (Cals and Smircich, 1991), and their work
deconstructed, typically using one text or segment of a text to produce a finely grained,
but also highly constrained, analysis of an individual reading. Applying multi-voicing
practices would lead those who use destabilizing practices to target more fragmented and
diverse voices. What if, for example, multiple texts written by Porter or Weick were
explored? Have their voices changed over time: can vintage Porter and Weick be
juxtaposed with Porter-nouveau or Weick-au-courant? How have the voices of these
authors changed in response to their destabilization? Have they been muted in deference
or become stridently defensive? Targeting multiple voices and using practices to desta-
bilize the relationships among them, would provide insights to complement the destabi-
lization of a single, disconnected voice.
By applying positioning practices these researchers might ask questions about their
own reflexive practices. For example, where do these deconstructions sit in the academic
community? How does destabilization produce the reflexive researcher as an obligatory
passage point, as opposed to other sets of practices? What are the political benefits of
deconstructing the work of others? How does marginalizing the Other benefit ones own
career prospects (cf. Sangren, 1992)? Another set of questions might involve considering
the relationships between the destabilizing and destabilized subjects? How might the
destabilized subject destabilize the destabilizer? How can Weick or Porter reply within
the strictures laid down by the tenets of postmodernism; can they resist in a way that
would be acknowledged as epistemologically valid by the reflexive researcher? The
combination of these sets of practices provides an endless space of potentially useful
interplays. The questions that we raise are not intended to be exhaustive; nor do we
suggest that our four sets of practices offer a complete or final summary of reflexive
practices. Nonetheless, by exploring the different ways in which reflexivity is practiced in

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494 M. Alvesson et al.
OMT and combining them, we are in a position to learn more about how academic
knowledge is produced the emphasis is less about how an individual researcher
conducts a particular study and more about the ways in which knowledge is constructed
by and in a community.

Dialectical Differentiation
In this section, we show how the four sets of reflexive practices might usefully differen-
tiate between those that emphasize avoiding problematic or dangerous things intel-
lectually, politically or ethically and those that try to produce new insights. We refer to
the former as D-reflexivity: D stands for deconstruction, defence, declaiming, destabilizing
and danger-warning. We call the latter R-reflexivity: R refers to reconstruction, reframing,
reclaiming, re-presentation. Of the four sets of practices above, destabilizing and posi-
tioning practices are mainly concerned with D-reflexivity, as their aim is to undermine
positive claims to results and contributions, while multi-perspective and multi-voicing
practices are related to R-reflexivity in that they encourage consideration of alternative
views.[2]
D-reflexivity practices challenge orthodox understandings by pointing out the limita-
tions of, and uncertainties behind, the manufactured unity and coherence of texts, as well
as the way in which conformism, institutional domination and academic and business
fashion may account for the production of particular knowledge. It engages with the
problems, uncertainties and social contingencies of knowledge claims whether empiri-
cal claims, concepts or theoretical propositions. By emphasizing how social science
orders the world in a particular way, power/knowledge connections are illuminated and
truth-creating effects are disarmed. These practices are conducted in attempts to coun-
teract harm to challenge efforts to stabilize the view of the world in a particular way and
expose the unreflexive reproduction of dominant vocabularies, rules or conventions in
social research. More radical practices deconstructive or Foucauldian emphasize the
arbitrary and subjectivity-shaping character of knowledge, while weaker practices
encourage moderate scepticism around interpretive and textual moves to convey legiti-
macy, certainty and closure. In both cases, the aim is to challenge the text in fundamental
ways to question the chosen elements of the logic of the research project and its
outcomes, showing them to be associated with particular paradigmatic roots and per-
spectives; with forms and politics of representation; and the socio-political forces of
research.
R-reflexivity is about developing and adding something; the R-reflexivist is in the
construction rather than demolition industry. It means bringing in issues of alternative
paradigms, root metaphors, perspectives, vocabularies, lines of interpretation, political
values, and representations; re-balancing and reframing voices independently of data in
order to interrogate these data in a more fundamental way. Instances of alternative
constructions and reconstruction of fundamental elements of the research project are
central to these reflexive practices. R-reflexive practices are employed to illuminate what
is left out and marginalized: the (almost) missed opportunity, premature framing, repro-
duction of received wisdom, re-enforcement of power relations and unimaginative label-
ling. They provide alternative descriptions, interpretations, results, vocabularies, voices,

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 Reflecting on Reflexivity 495
and points of departures that could be taken into account, and show some of the
differences that they would make. R-reflexivity aims to open up new avenues, paths, and
lines of interpretation to produce better research ethically, politically, empirically, and
theoretically.
We suggest that reflexive researchers might engage in practices that create a dialectic
between D-reflexivity and R-reflexivity. Moving between tearing down pointing at the
weaknesses in the text and disarming truth claims and then developing something new
or different, where the anxieties of offering positive knowledge do not hold the researcher
back. Martin (1990) shows how one can use D-reflexive practices to demolish the
assumptions of a text, thereby creating space to engage in R-reflexivity and construct an
alternative and emancipatory text. Martin engages in D-reflexivity when she decon-
structs the story of a female employee having a caesarean, as told from the perspective of
her employer. Deconstruction is used not to generate new knowledge but, to destabilize
the text and to challenge its gendered and managerialist assumptions, which then enables
the use of R-reflexivity to introduce new assumptions that construct a different and
potentially emancipatory text, providing a new understanding of gender and organiza-
tional life.

Self-Reflexive Practices
In bringing the understanding of reflexivity to bear on ourselves, we acknowledge that we
take the focus away from what other researchers are doing with regard to reflexivity and
turn the spotlight on ourselves, possibly earning the criticism of narcissism as a result. In
trying to be reflexive we naturally face the sorts of problems that others face and we do
not intend to set ourselves up as somehow being immune from the problems that beset
other scholars. We hope, however, that we can fruitfully bring the range of reflexive
practices that we have identified to bear on our own efforts at knowledge production.
We start by confessing our criterion for successful reflexivity; that is, whether it makes
a productive difference. We believe some kind of tangible result should be demonstrated,
such as ideas, concepts, challenges to conventional thinking, or suggestions for new
research. Being productive does not necessarily mean being positive negating or
deconstructing ideas is also a productive outcome. Going through the intimate relation
between the researcher and their knowledge in a reflexive loop should, we believe, lead
to some novel (re)descriptions, (re)interpretations or (re)problematizations that add some
quality to the text and the results it communicates. We also believe that another purpose
of reflexivity is to improve research and theorizing producing fieldwork, texts or
theoretical results that are better in some distinctive way than they would be without
reflexivity. The meaning of better is not self evident it may be more creative, offering
a broader set of ideas/interpretations, more ethically informed or sensitive or avoiding
getting caught by the social conventions or fashions. Nonetheless, it seems clear that we
favour instrumental reflexivity (Weick, 1999): for us, reflexivity is not primarily an end in
itself, but a means to improve research in some way.
We therefore present a classification which, we tell readers, constitutes a new way of
thinking about reflexivities rather than reflexivity; and about practices that come to be
known as various forms of reflexivity. Thus we argue that our categorization constitutes

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496 M. Alvesson et al.
a contribution, not only informing theoretical reflection but also research design. But
what exactly is our contribution? Have we identified something? Or have we constructed
a particular version of reflexivity? Have we simply mapped a body of literature? Or have
we ordered and domesticated the field, using our powers as established researchers to
normalize how reflexivity is to be understood? Have we reduced reflexivity to a set of
four packages? Or have we provided a catalyst for further discussions on reflexivity? And,
if the latter, what does our classification mean for the construction of knowledge about
reflexivity?
Multi-perspective and multi-voicing practices help us address these questions. One
observation is that different consumers might use our work differently. For example,
functionalist readers might see our framework as a more or less accurate representation
of a body of work. Interpretivist readers, on the other hand, might note that a map does
not need to be accurate to be useful: the accuracy of a map may be less important than
whether and how it is consumed. Postmodern readers may resist the production of the
map altogether, arguing that it simply reifies knowledge and represents modernist claims
to authorial privilege. Foucauldians may say that we arbitrarily order what is perhaps
better seen as an open space for reflexivity and thereby freeze understandings. Either
way, whether or not our categorization ever serves as a catalyst for discussions about
reflexivity depends upon voices of readers who will ultimately determine the success of
this categorization (e.g. good map; poor map; catalyst, or not) through the way in which
they engage with it.
So far, this discussion is very much informed by R-reflexivity. Drawing on a range of
reflexive practices, we emphasize our contribution: the production of new insights by
reconceptualizing reflexivity as practice; and an account with alternative descriptions
and points of departure to produce better research. We acknowledge that our classifi-
cation is but one reading for which we attempt to make a persuasive case, using the usual
rhetoric associated with our academic community, such as acknowledging that the
questions we raise are not intended to be exhaustive nor are the four sets of practices a
complete account of reflexive practices.
To explore the dangers of our contribution, we must introduce D-reflexivity. Despite
our protestations that there is an open and diverse world of reflexivities, there is always
a risk in ordering and fixing it, as we do with our categorization: some potential
candidates for inclusion are left out or packed together with someone else; while the
labels that we use help to construct the phenomena in a particular way. The work that
fits neatly into one box or another is inevitably privileged and, quite possibly, reified.
Work that straddles classifications is either forced into one of them or left in limbo.
So, for example, we combine two different approaches under the heading of multi-
perspective practices those that use different perspectives to build a more complete
picture, and those that use them to show that a complete picture is impossible. We must
therefore acknowledge the dangers of instrumental reflexivity, which can domesticate the
unruly, worrying, and unpredictable by forcing it into boxes and categories, which may
then be appropriated by other researchers as a convenient tool that can be used in ways
that may be antithetical to many reflexive researchers.
D-reflexivity also draws our attention to some of the things absent from our classifi-
cation. First, while we present a classification reminiscent of the paradigms but, by

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 Reflecting on Reflexivity 497
focusing on practice, we avoid the epistemological and ontological debates that charac-
terized the paradigm wars. Second, in focusing on textual practice, we avoid a discussion
of the practice of doing research, in the sense of fieldwork. Our emphasis on the practice
of writing (and of generally thinking about) research allows us to ignore the myriad
research subjects that co-construct research through their relations with researchers. To
be sure, we acknowledge these research subjects in our discussion of multi-voicing, for
example, but we never engage with them. They are absent from our discussion. Of course,
we have answers for these self criticisms. For example, the paradigm debate is irresolv-
able (cf. Clegg and Hardy, 1996b). What comes to be constructed as reflexivity are the
practices in published work, not purist theoretical discussions. Space constraints and
demands for a clear focus are imposed on journal articles, which makes it impossible for
us to include everything and, therefore, reflexivity in research design practices is some-
thing that should be taken up elsewhere. And, ultimately, we argue that is in the ongoing
closing down of ideas and opening them up through debate that knowledge albeit
partial is produced. Thus we return to R-reflexivity.
Why do we advocate this particular dynamic between D- and R-reflexivity, ending
with the latter? Part of the answer probably lies with the fact that we do empirical
research and, some reflexive practices make it almost impossible for us to write up our
empirical work. Furthermore, it is difficult emotionally to engage in ones own research
and, then, simply to dismiss it as dangerous knowledge. Thus we prefer a pragmatic
rather than an idealistic engagement with reflexivity. At the same time, we conduct
critical research to which D-reflexivity is central. As a result, it also profits us to acknowl-
edge D-reflexivity. Equally, it is perhaps not surprising that we then suggest moves to
negate it by drawing attention back to some of the practices that we believe facilitate
productive responses. As a result, we counteract our R-reflexive tendencies with
D-reflexivity in a dialectic that is professional and personal; pragmatic and idealistic and
which, of course, draws on many of the practices that we have already identified to make
a persuasive, credible case.

CONCLUSIONS
We believe that reflexivity is important to the understanding of what happens in
research. Reflexivity means thinking through what one is doing to encourage insights
about the nature of social science and, especially, the role that language, power/
knowledge connections, social interests and ideologies, rhetorical moves and manoeu-
vring in the socio-political field play in producing particular accounts. It may also inspire
creativity through opening up for new perspectives and providing reference points for
what one is doing and to avoid or minimize certain harmful aspects of research that
follow from lack of reflexivity. To this end, we have analysed the existing work on
reflexivity and then categorized and conceptualized it in terms of four common sets of
practices: as multi-perspective, multi-voicing, positioning and destabilizing. We have also
introduced a framework of reflexivity around a dialectic between positive and negative
positions: R- and D-reflexivity. This allows us to understand in more depth the different
ways in which reflexivity can be achieved. We also believe that these conceptualizations

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498 M. Alvesson et al.
are useful in adopting a more critical stance on reflexivity; we cannot judge whether and
how reflexive research is useful unless we understand the practices it produces and their
effects.
It is, in our opinion, important not to mystify reflexivity. Without critical interrogation,
reflexivity risks becoming a dead end rather than a route to more thoughtful and
interesting research. It may be used as a cynical rhetorical device designed to demon-
strate researcher credentials in critical or postmodern circles in the same way that
conventions of rigour and replicability apply in positivist circles an academic hoop
through which those wishing to publish must jump (Alvesson and Skldberg, 2000). As
such it may primarily fulfil ceremonial purposes of legitimation similar to the methods
section in academic papers where quantitative and qualitative research is disciplined by
neo-positivist templates.
In reviewing reflexivity as textual practice, we are interested in how research is written
up in ways that have implications for reflexivity. If knowledge more generally is a product
of linguistic, political, and institutional influences, so too is reflexivity: it is a construction
of communities of researchers whose work is informed by particular theoretical influ-
ences; who are subject to the demands of particular university systems, journals, and
granting agencies; who operate within discourses of science, education, management,
and progress; and who use language to promote particular versions of truth or claims to
superior insights. Reflexivity is not a fixed thing: what we as members of a research
community know to be reflexivity is shaped by practices carried out by researchers in
producing texts which are accepted as being reflexive. As papers are published in
reputable journals, the practices described or enacted by researchers play an important
role in constructing the meaning of reflexivity; and, as these meanings come to be widely
shared, they become institutionalized. Thus the practices outlined here collectively
construct the meaning of reflexivity and, as such, warrant closer examination.

NOTES
[1] For a review of reflexivity in other disciplines, see Lynch (2000).
[2] This is not to deny that the sets of practices include some elements of both: destabilizing practices offer
some sort of alternative understanding even Foucauldian ideas on how knowledge produces rather
than reveals truth says something about how subjects are created; in the case of multi-perspectivist
practices, there is frequently a partial or minimalist deconstruction when one perspective is used to
disturb another (Alvesson, 1996).

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